9 6 CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 



that not only the Department of Lands, Forests and Mines of Ontario, but 

 every member of the Government, is alive to the situation and will welcome 

 any criticisms or practical suggestions which you have to offer. ar, 



hear. Applause). 



The PRESIDENT : I will now call upon Mr. Knechtel to read his paper, 

 on the Dominion Forest Reserves. 



Mr. KNECHTEL: T don't wonder that the President has difficulty in 

 pronouncing my name, because it was nearly four years before I could say 

 it myself. (Laughter). I have been very much interested in the paper 

 which has been read by Doctor Fernow. I am very familiar with Doctor 

 Fernow's thought, because for one year in Cornell University I was in close 

 and constant contact with that thought. I had taken the course in College 

 before I went to Doctor Fernow, and I wish to say that the courses I received 

 with him were the very best that I had in all my college work. (Applause). 

 I am glad to notice that Doctor Fernow is giving the Dominion credit for 

 already acting upor the lines that he has suggested in his admirable 

 paper. 



THE DOMINION FOEEST RESERVES. 



ABRAHAM KNECHTEL, F.E. 



Inspector Dominion Forest Reserves. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



It would almost seem as if the white race had begun wrong on this con- 

 tinent. Needing cleared land for agriculture we started in the woods, and 

 now when we need woods we start on the cleared land. The arrangement was 

 not an economic one. The Prairie should have been located near the Atlantic 

 and the woodland in the Northwest. Arranged as it was, with the forest on 

 the land that was close to the market for its products, forest destruction was 

 at first a necessity, and later became a habit. Fire, the good servant in 

 clearing the land, ran rampant carrying forest devastation far beyond the 

 necessities of the people. 



The earliest settlers, coming from Europe were used to forest conserva- 

 tion. They had practised it in the countries from which they came. Forest 

 destruction was to them a new thing; but the forests were so vast that they 

 thought there could never be a scarcity of wood, and they reasoned that the 

 more the forest was destroyed, the more the agricultural interests of the 

 country would be advanced. But the modern settler sees the forest in a dif- 

 ferent light, especially so in the great Northwest where on the wide prairie 

 wood is a luxury. To him forest conservation is the necessity, not forest 

 destruction. He has no delight in the devastation of the woods by fire, and 

 he hails with hope legislation and management tending to improve the con- 

 dition of the forest. He sees clearly that his comfort and his agricultural 

 interests are closely dependent upon a plentiful supply of wood. 



The country is so vast and the demand for wood so great, it is a tremen- 

 dous problem to so manage the forests that this demand may be met continu- 



